Rosewater's Christmas

Edward Rosewater, longtime editor and publisher
of the Omaha Bee, and a force to be reckoned with in Nebraska
politics from the Bee's founding in 1871 until his death
in 1906, came to America in 1854 at the age of thirteen. By the
time the Civil War broke out he had become a telegrapher and
served with the U.S. Army telegraph corps. He was brought to
Nebraska by Edward Creighton to serve as Omaha manager for the
new transcontinental telegraph line. In Nebraska he became immediately
interested in politics. A member of the state legislature in
1870, he was the key figure in impeachment proceedings against
Governor David Butler. After he established the Omaha Bee
in 1871, it became his major interest and one of the state's
great newspapers.

Rosewater's reminiscences of his first
Christmas in the United States appeared in the Bee on
December 25, 1904, several years before his death: "On Christmas
morning, 1854-just fifty years ago today-I first set foot on
American soil. Parting with kindred, friends and schoolmates
at my native village in Bohemia, in the middle of September,
and accompanying my parents to the seaport of Bremen, we traversed
the ocean in the packet ship 'Cleo,' a three-mast sailing vessel,
and landed in New York harbor after a voyage of forty-two days.
Emerging from the ship, which landed in the neighborhood of Castle
Garden, we, that is, my father, mother and seven children-five
boys and two girls-marched up the middle of Broadway in Indian
file, to take our first view of America's metropolis.

"The sky was clear and the air quite
crisp on that memorable Christmas morning, and the streets were
crowded with people arrayed in their holiday apparel. . . . The
streets of New York of 1854 were very unlike the streets of New
York in 1904. Broadway was paved then with square blocks of stone
and on business days the rush of omnibuses, drays and other vehicles
that choked the street from dawn to dusk was simply deafening.
The most rapid locomotion was by ordinary carriage. The street
railway had not made its appearance. The elevated road had not
even been imagined and a bridge across the East river was an
iridescent dream. The tallest building in New York was not over
seven stories and the office building had not yet been invented."

Rosewater also recalled his first American
Christmas gift, "a pea green jacket bought at a ready-made
clothes shop for the munificent sum of $3, which I proudly donned
and wore for two years thereafter, when it was transmitted for
further wear to one of my younger brothers." He noted in
conclusion, "These reminiscences are . . . a forceful reminder
that my first Christmas in America was also the first Christmas
that a handful of pioneers celebrated in the newly founded city
of Omaha."